2010 Hyper-Con/J-Pop Summit Festival September 18, 2010

Today I attended two events, the first was Hyper-Con which was like an extremely small version of an anime convention and the second was the 2010 J-Pop Summit Festival at SF Japantown. I will first talk about Hyper-Con.

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2010 Hyper-Con

Hyper-Con was my first so-called anime convention. Compared to real conventions I’ve seen pictures of online and heard of from my friends who have gone to them, this was a pretty bad convention in my opinion. It’s a two-day event that was held at the Boys and Girls’ Club of San Francisco building which was a small building that felt like an elementary school. There were several rooms used for this event, there was the outside entrance that had a couple of bands playing, there was a gym that was used for vendors and artists to sell and show off their works, an anime viewing room, a video game room which was all fighting games like Tekken, Street Fighter, etc., a room for panels, and a cosplay area. I don’t really have much more to say about this event, but I do have pictures to share so I’ll leave you to view them so that you can see Hyper-Con for yourself.

Live music in the parking lot where you enter.

The vendor tables felt more like a swap meet.

Out of vendors, I was especially interested in the one that was selling figures and stuff.

Various forms of fighting games were present such as Tekken, Street Fighter, etc. Later in the day there was a tournament for the games but I already left.

There were several good cosplay at Hyper-Con, but not many like at a real con.

Now I can’t be saying that it was all bad, though I would have liked the cost of entering the con to be less ($12 for today and $10 tomorrow). There were a couple of factors that made it the way it was. First, the place that it was being held at is nothing compared to actual convention centers, extremely small. Second, Hyper-Con I think is new and so not that many people know about it yet, so it may improve in the future and one day it may even become a big con in the Bay Area (iono). Third, the weather today was horrible in my opinion, it wasn’t raining or windy but really muggy and warm like Hawaii, so I felt like I was sweating all the time. I wasn’t originally planning on coming to Hyper-Con, but decided to go because I thought it would be great as practice for the real thing. My first major anime con I’m going to will be Fanime 2011 in San Jose.

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The first picture in this post is from today’s J-Pop Summit Festival 2010 in San Francisco’s Japantown. I have more photos but let me just quickly talk about this event. I left Hyper-Con early with friends and hopped on a bus to J-town for the festival. Once we arrived this is what we saw.

There were tons of people around, it almost felt like the Cherry Blossom Festival again but without the Sakura. There were cosplayers around too, but most of them were as Harajuku girls due to an event regarding them. I also saw these cute cosplayers too.

They are dressed as characters from the Vocaloid series, a Japanese software that people can use to create a digital singing voice for music. It is popular in Japan and it is also gaining ground here in the US too. They even had a Hatsune Miku “Live” concert held at the Viz Cinema in the New People building. I heard it was sold out so maybe they will expand to other parts of the country.

Here are a few more photos of the J-Pop Summit Festival 2010.

Pocky eating contest. Winner gets a year supply of Pocky. The MC hoped that one of the contestants would choke. The guy with the while shirt won.

People taking a picture of my friend Craig who is known for cosplaying as the guy from Brain Age. If you know the face of that guy from Brain Age then you know what my friend's face looks like.

Was my first time trying Taiyaki. It's basically like a pancake shaped like a fish with filling inside. I got one with chocolate inside and it was good, just wish I had a glass of milk with it.

I know I've shown this before, but it always looks so photogenic to not photograph. This is the Peace Padoga in SF's Japantown.

My loot from J-Pop festival, Hi-Chew and a Ritsu plushi (I need Yui and Mugi to complete the band). I spent about $30 today; $12 at Hyper-Con, $10 for Ritsu, and 8$ for food including the Hi-Chew.

It was nice to go out with friends to these events but I’m tired now. J-Pop Summit Festival was fun and also it helps bring business to Japantown. Normally when there is nothing going on at J-town it becomes deserted, no one around when compared to the crowded events like the Sakura Matsuri. I probably won’t be going to any more events like this until the 2011 Sakura Matsuri due to school taking priority, but I still have my first semester Japanese class and my AnimeFX club meetings so my mindset is always towards Japan.